Wireless Security Architecture

Designing and Maintaining Secure Wireless for Enterprise

Jennifer Minella

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781119883050
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119883074
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Redes de computadoras

Reduce organizational cybersecurity risk and build comprehensive WiFi, private cellular, and IOT security solutions

Wireless Security Architecture: Designing and Maintaining Secure Wireless for Enterprise offers readers an essential guide to planning, designing, and preserving secure wireless infrastructures. It is a blueprint to a resilient and compliant architecture that responds to regulatory requirements, reduces organizational risk, and conforms to industry best practices. This book emphasizes WiFi security, as well as guidance on private cellular and Internet of Things security.

Readers will discover how to move beyond isolated technical certifications and vendor training and put together a coherent network that responds to contemporary security risks. It offers up-to-date coverage—including data published for the first time—of new WPA3 security, Wi-Fi 6E, zero-trust frameworks, and other emerging trends. It also includes:

• Concrete strategies suitable for organizations of all sizes, from large government agencies to small public and private companies
• Effective technical resources and real-world sample architectures
• Explorations of the relationships between security, wireless, and network elements
• Practical planning templates, guides, and real-world case studies demonstrating application of the included concepts

Perfect for network, wireless, and enterprise security architects, Wireless Security Architecture belongs in the libraries of technical leaders in firms of all sizes and in any industry seeking to build a secure wireless network.

Part I
Technical Foundations

In This Part

• Chapter 1: Introduction to Concepts and Relationships
• Chapter 2: Understanding Technical Elements
• Chapter 3: Understanding Authentication and Authorization
• Chapter 4: Understanding Domain and Wi-Fi Design Impacts

CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Concepts and Relationships

Before we dive in to the how-to, I want to introduce some concepts at a high level and explain the relationships among them so there's at least a baseline context moving through the subsequent chapters.

The overview here will look at the roles and responsibilities of the various technical teams involved in wireless architecture and security, then touch on basic security concepts that will be referenced throughout this book, and after that will cover some key foundational wireless concepts.

Since this book is written for a variety of technology professionals, some of you will have deep knowledge in one or more areas, and others may be looking to fill some gaps. The following sections serve to get us all on the same level of understanding and taxonomy, so we have a common starting point for the architecture conversations that follow.

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NOTE While this chapter introduces concepts that will be referenced in the context of wireless security, the terms and constructs here transcend wireless or even network security topics. I've purposefully avoided confounding textbook-style definitions and tried to maintain a focus on the application of the definitions within the scope of this book's content.

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First, we'll look at the roles and responsibilities of various people and teams within the organization, how they may relate to your wireless security architecture, and what to do if that person or role is nonexistent in your organization. After that is an introduction to basic security concepts relevant to wireless security and an explanation of each specifically in the context of wireless security (vs. diving into lengthy definitions). Finally, we'll cover a few foundational wireless concepts that will impact your architecture, since we're not assuming everyone reading this book has deep (or possibly any) enterprise wireless experience.

This chapter covers an introduction to concepts and relationships organized in three parts:

• Roles and Responsibilities
• Security Concepts
• Wireless Concepts

Roles and Responsibilities

Organizations of different sizes, industries, and security profiles will have different types of teams and resources. This discussion of roles and responsibilities will help outline some common titles and roles within an organization to provide context of how these different people and teams interact throughout the secure wireless planning and implementation. Also, this section should help you identify areas and roles for which your organization may not have specific people assigned. Whether officially or unofficially, where there is a role absent in the organization, there's an opportunity (and expectation) for you or your team to fill those gaps (yourself or with help from other teams or third parties).

As an example, in its purest form some might say this book is written for people with the title of “enterprise security architect.” However, many organizations don't have a single person or team dedicated to this task, in which case you as a network or wireless architect have an opportunity to use the guidance here to fill some of that void. With each section there's an explanation of how to engage with the various roles, and some tips and tricks for navigating the organization.

Network and Wireless Architects

We'll start with covering the roles and responsibilities of network and wireless architects since it's likely most readers will identify most closely with this area of expertise.

Depending on the size of the organization, the wired and wireless teams may be the same, or may be different groups or people. For purposes of brevity, “network and wireless architects” will be discussed as simply “network architects” for this section. Aside from LAN networking and Wi-Fi professionals, organizations are likely to have specialists for other networking specialties such as datacenter, WAN, and cloud—all of which we'll consider lumped into the networking category here.

The role of the network architect is to design the systems, interactions, and integrations that provide the appropriate connectivity, availability, quality of service, and security for an organization's networked communications. Typically, the network architect will participate in or define requirements for configurations and specify or recommend products to meet the objectives.

The network architect and (if existent) the enterprise security architect (or teams) should work together to define the wireless architectures covered in this book and specifically to ensure the security controls (including policies/procedures, configurations, and monitoring) are in line with the organization's risk management strategy. In the absence of the enterprise security architect, the majority of work described here will fall to the network architect, with input from other security resources.

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SIZING IT UP: IDENTIFYING WHO HAS WHAT ROLE

In large organizations, once a system is in place the organization may rely on different teams with operations, engineering, and system admin roles to manage the daily operations and maintenance of the systems that were defined and designed by the architect. Of course, in small organizations it is quite likely the network architect, network admin, wireless professional, and help desk escalation contact may be one person or a small team.

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Security, Risk, and Compliance Roles

Discussing the roles of the various security, risk, and compliance resources gets a bit dodgy since only the most mature organizations will have these roles well defined. Having said that, almost every organization should have someone responsible for making decisions about the organization's risk tolerance. Risk tolerance may not be well defined and may be more qualitative than quantitative, but there will be a risk manager, a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), a compliance officer, a board of directors, and if nothing else—an owner who cares and makes decisions about risk toler...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Technical Foundations
• Part II: Putting It All Together
• Part III: Ongoing Maintenance and Beyond
• Appendix A: Notes on Configuring 802.1X with Microsoft NPS
• Appendix B: Additional Resources
• Appendix C: Sample Architectures
• Appendix D: Parting Thoughts and Call to Action
• Index
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• About the Technical Editor
• Acknowledgments
• End User License Agreement